Thursday, January 31, 2019

As the polar vortex moved in to the Chicago area the local media outlets touted the many warming centers--quite a few of which are open only from 9am-5pm--the warmest part of the day, but that's not what I'm posting about tonight.

And it was closed yesterday when it was -23. As you see in the screen shot. And today when the thermometer hasn't cracked zero the doors were locked again.

This is was what I saw at the front door of the Niles Township office late this afternoon.

The sign reads, "Niles Township Wednesday 1/30 and Thursday 1/31 due to the dangerous wind chill and for the safety of our staff and clients."

But what about freezing clients?

Township government in Illinois, particularly in metropolitan areas, is an anachronism. But it does offer sinecures for the lucky ones. Sure township offices have food pantries but such duties can easily be handed off to other government agencies. Obviously the Niles Township office can't even open a warming center during the coldest spell of weather in over thirty years.

Illinois has too much government. Get the weed whacker out. And start with township government.

Microsoft doesn't believe its users can think for itself. So it has a plug-in, NewsGuard, that protects readers from fake news.

But Mark Dice reveals that NewsGuard gives a green check mark, meaning it is verified, to stories such as the retracted University of Virginia campus rape case, which Rolling Stone paid damages on, as well as the BuzzFeed fake news report that President Trump directed his lawyer to lie to Congress.

The mayor's office announced Tuesday Alderman Danny Solis has resigned as chairman of the city council's zoning committee.

The resignation comes the same day the Chicago Sun-Times revealed salacious details about the federal investigation of Solis.

The affidavit said Solis traded his actions on the City Council for other kinds of favors including receiving sex acts, Viagra, and campaign contributions.

Chicago's arcane zoning laws are ideal for alderman looking for all kinds of "favors." After the Finance Committee, the City Council Zoning Committee is the second-most powerful committee. The chairman of that committee, 50-year-alderman Ed Burke, stepped aside from his chairmanship after his indictment late last year.

Solis has been wearing a wire--and amazingly he captured Boss Michael Madigan (D-Chicago) on tape. The always cautious state House speaker for 34 of the last 36 years.

Tuesday, January 29, 2019

Liberals are a real hoot sometimes. A painful hoot, but humorous all the same. Progressives destroy states like Illinois, California. and New York with high taxes and oppressive regulation. Many leave, including some leftists, and settle down in red states like Tennessee.

And then they try to turn their new home into the nightmare they fled.

"Empire" star Jussie Smollett was brutally attacked by 2 men who beat him up, put his head in a noose and screamed, "This is MAGA country."

Sources directly connected to Jussie tell TMZ, the actor arrived in Chicago from New York late Monday, and at around 2 AM he was hungry and went to a Subway. We're told when he walked out, someone yelled, "Aren't you that f***ot 'Empire' n*****?"

The 2 men -- both white and wearing ski masks -- viciously attacked Jussie as he fought back, but they beat him badly and fractured a rib. They put a rope around his neck, poured bleach on him and as they left they yelled, "This is MAGA country."

Jussie was taken to Northwestern Memorial where he was treated. He was discharged later Tuesday morning.

Update 10:15pm CST:

This story doesn't pass the smell test. Not only is there a paucity of Trump supporters in Chicago and many of the suburbs, last night was quite cold with high winds and drifting snow. I know, I was crazy enough to run 10 miles late Monday in Morton Grove and Skokie, which are just a dozen miles from where the incident took place. It was not the type of night for creeps to stalk a TV star. There weren't a lot of people on the streets and automobile traffic was much less than usual.

Besides, hooligans don't like cold and snowy winter nights either. And do racists really want to watch a show about a rap record label? How do they even know who Smollett is?

My liberal friends--yes, I have them--complain to me about calling many Democratic politicians leftists.

Well, like Willie Brown's former girlfriend Kamala Harris, they do leftist things, such as advocate for socialized medicine and abolishing private insurance.

Harris, a Democratic member of the US Senate for two years, did just that last night.

"We need to have Medicare-for-all." When asked by CNN's Jake Tapper if that mean eliminating private insurance, she said it does, citing paperwork hassle with insurers. Of course that happens. But government, unless you are a 76-year-old man and the FBI is raiding your home, is even more inefficient than health insurance companies.

Harvard law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz tells Fox News that the indictment of Roger Stone, a longtime Republican operative, albeit a sleazy one, as well as a friend of Donald Trump, has nothing to do with so-called collusion with Russia.

Saturday, January 26, 2019

Many new wave acts from the Class of 1977, such as the Clash, XTC, and Talking Heads are beloved and long missed.

Then there are the lesser known groups from '77 who are largely forgotten. The Fabulous Poodles is one of those acts. This English band is hard to classify, as it included a violinist who also dabbled in the electric edition of that instrument. But if I had to compare them to somebody, because of their quirkiness, Talking Heads comes to mind. Or maybe perhaps a much stranger act, Devo.

Watch as some poorly educated college students blame President Trump for the temporarily concluded partial government shutdown--until a journalist from Campus Reform tells them about the offer the president made to Democratic leaders.

Thursday, January 24, 2019

"We," that is the leftist media and the Hollywood elites are suffering so much from Trump Derangement Syndrome that they are attacking minors.

On The View yesterday Joy Behar spoke the truth, albeit accidentally.

"Many people admitted they made snap judgments before these other facts came in," Whoopi Goldberg says here. "But is it that we just instantly say that's what it is based on what we see in that moment and then have to walk stuff back when it turns out we're wrong? Why is that? Why do we keep making the same mistake?"

Which led Joy Behar to say, "Because we're desperate to get Trump out of office. That's why."

"The League of Shadows has been a check against human corruption for thousands of years. We sacked Rome, loaded trade ships with plague rats, burned London to the ground. Every time a civilization reaches the pinnacle of its decadence, we return to restore the balance." Ra's al Ghul in Batman Begins.

Explosive news from Tribune’s Greg Pratt. He reports that records show that Ald. Edward Burke’s son "was under internal investigation for allegedly making inappropriate sexual comments at the sheriff’s office when Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle’s administration hired him" to a nearly $100,000 per year job. Story here.

The son is Edward Burke Jr.

From the Tribune article:

One investigation began after a female sheriff's employee alleged that Burke [Junior] was 'consistently disrespectful of women,' talked about sex acts and would leave the office by saying, "I'm leaving, going to watch the girls on Rush Street," records show.

She also said Burke called himself "the law," claimed to have “tapes” that would "humiliate" Dart, vowed to run for sheriff and said he would fire a bunch of employees when he won, records show. A county memo included in the records dated after Burke’s resignation said the sheriff's Office of Professional Review did not get to interview him before he resigned and recommended no further action be taken in the matter.

The elder Burke until recently was the chairman of the most powerful committee on Chicago's City Council and like his ward neighbor Illinois Democratic Party boss Michael Madigan, he has presumably made a fortune in the tax appeal business. Conflict of interest? He was charged in a criminal complaint late last year for extortion. Burke has been an alderman for 50 years and a Democratic ward committeeman for 51 years.

Central to the extortion case is a fundraiser Burke held for Taxwinkle, who is running for mayor of Chicago.

It certainly has been a tough week at BuzzFeed. A week after Robert Mueller’s office raised doubts about the news org's report that Donald Trump ordered his lawyer-fixer Michael Cohen to lie to Congress comes word that the one-time poster child for pure-digital growth plans to lay off a reported 200 staffers, or 15% of its work force.

Co-founder and CEO Jonah Peretti sent a memo to staff this afternoon announcing the job cuts, which will hit the web content and international units including the Ben Smith-led news division beginning next week.

"Over the past few months, we've done extensive work examining the trends in our business and the evolving economics of the digital platforms," he wrote (read the memo in full below). "We've developed a good understanding of where we can consolidate our teams, focus in on the content that is working, and achieve the right cost structure to support our multi-revenue model. We are confident the changes we are making will put us on a firm foundation and allow us to invest and grow sustainably for years to come."

This will mark the third round of cuts at the digital news producer in 14 months, following layoffs in November 2017 and in September. The former consisted of about 100 job losses, mainly in its "business unit."

If you are not listening to Mark Levin's radio show--or catching him on his podcast--you are cheating yourself, unless, that is, you are not a thinking person. But if you are reading my blog I believe you are a thinker. Levin, known as the Great One, is a noted legal scholar and the former chief of staff to US attorney general Ed Meese. He clearly prepares for his show in the same meticulous manner a skilled doctor does for a major surgery.

On Tuesday Levin opened his show by justifiably savaging the mainstream media--which embarrassed itself twice over the weekend. First, in regards to the BuzzFeed fake news tale about President Trump directing his lawyer to lie to Congress and the gleeful pile on led by MSNBC and CNN, and then the use of a selectively edited video about a confrontation at the National Mall involving Catholic school boys wearing MAGA hats. Among the falsities that were exposed in that story is that a group calling itself the Black Hebrews began the face-off, not the Make America Great Again kids.

Said Levin:

Here's some of the fundamental problems I see with the American media. There are no uniform standards among news outlets, no clear line between news and opinion, no universal rules of professional conduct for journalists--no particular experience required. Look at Chuck Todd, Chris Cuomo, George Stephanopoulos. These are not professional newsmen. And no commitment to objectivity. You can hardly distinguish between news and opinion. The mass media is overwhelmingly left-wing and overwhelmingly pro-Democrat Party. I think this presidency has demonstrated that more than ever before. They hate President Trump, they hate his supporters--even more broadly they're very cynical about our founding principles, capitalism, [and] national sovereignty.

After blowing the whistle on how the media champions leftists such as the Obamas, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Bernie Sanders--but never seriously questions their expensive and impractical proposals such as "college for all" and a "minimum income for all," the Great One gets to the point.

"So the result is what? Old fashioned yellow journalism," Levin observed. Meaning the type of reporting that dominated the newspaper industry in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, "very unprofessional and very unscrupulous," Levin said of that era.

Yep, Levin is right. The sanctimonious yet dishonest contemporary media, with a few exceptions, is an internet age yellow journalism operation.

William Randolph Hearst was one of the yellow journalists mentioned by Levin in that show's introduction. Today Hearst is mostly known as the model for Orson Welles' Charles Foster Kane in his masterpiece Citizen Kane. In that film, during the Spanish-American War, Kane's foster father reads a Kane newspaper headline, "Galleons of Spain off Jersey coast." When he objects to Kane, "There is not the slightest proof of this," he receives this reply, "Can you prove it isn't [true]?"

"Spanish galleons" type headlines are the ancestors of today's clickbait.

Which brings me to another favorite fable of the 21st century yellow journalists, Donald Trump's collusion with Russia to get himself elected president. I see no proof that it happened. If I come face to face with a Trump-hating media leftist I expect to told after I make my feelings clear on this so-called scandal, "Can you prove that there isn't collusion."

Wednesday, January 23, 2019

Last week the mainstream media, which is dominated by liberals, allowed its hatred of President Trump to advance two false stories, the BuzzFeed tale about how the president told his lawyer to lie to Congress in 2017, and the confrontation at the National Mall involving some Catholic high school students wearing MAGA hats that the kids, it turns out, did not start.

Poorly sourced, slanted reporting has become the new standard among prestige media. Three weeks ago, a little girl, black, was shot and killed in a Houston parking lot; initial reports that the shooter was white turned a local police item into national news. The New York Times ran stories on the case for days, exploring the implications of targeted, race-based murder in an age of intolerance. When it emerged that the child was killed by two black gang members gunning for their enemies, coverage of the story ceased.

Reporters have always made errors, but mistakes should occur independent of ideology. What we’re seeing instead is a pattern—media miscues always occur in the same direction, in favor of the liberal perspective. Over the last two years, countless “bombshell” reports have signaled grave danger for the Trump presidency, up to and including impeachment or resignation. Trump’s son got an early look at the Wikileaks pages; Anthony Scaramucci was tied to a dodgy Russian hedge fund; Michael Cohen met Russians in Prague; Paul Manafort met Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy in London; James Comey would testify that Trump was under investigation; and so on. As outrage ebbs from each discredited story, it is relegated to the memory hole in time for the next one to emerge.

Ever since Trump’s arrival on the national stage, the media have devoted themselves to destroying him, and, by extension, the ideologies that supposedly account for his popularity—white supremacy and toxic masculinity. Major media outlets have shed any pretense to rigor or probity, even as they make ostentatious shows of “fact-checking” the president’s statements.

Obsession with white privilege focuses maximal scrutiny on any incident that tracks with the right narrative. Over the last year, we’ve seen a spate of cellphone videos capturing petty disputes amplified across social media and reported in the national media—as long as the footage depicts a white person complaining to or about a black person doing something relatively minor. Whether the incidents in question have anything to do with race is unimportant. Pushing the narrative that Trump has ignited a firestorm of white racism across the country requires a continual flow of stories making that point, regardless of accuracy or context. The relentless search for Trumpian villainy has precast the meaning of every story. All that remains is to fill in the blanks.

Chicago style violence visited its southwest suburbs last night as an 18-year-old man was shot to death at Orland Square Mall in Orland Park. I attended high school in Orland Park, as did Bloody Chicago's Victor Maggio, who was on the scene an astounding ten minutes after the shooting.

The hatred of President Trump and his supporters by the media has gone too far as we've learned about the rush to misjudgment in the case of the high school kids in Washington for the March For Life who were wrongly accused by selective use of video of racism.

The private Catholic high school at the center of the viral clash at Lincoln Memorial on Friday has closed for the safety of its students after claiming to have received threats and consulting local police.

Covington Catholic High School principal Robert Rowe told parents on Monday night that the school would remain closed the next day.

'After meeting with local authorities, we have made the decision to cancel school and be closed on Tuesday January 22, in order to ensure the safety of our students, faculty and staff.

'All activities on campus will be cancelled for the entire day and evening.

Meanwhile the president backs the kids over the left-wing media mob. "Nick Sandmann and the students of Covington have become symbols of Fake News", Donald Trump Tweeted early this morning, "and how evil it can be. They have captivated the attention of the world, and I know they will use it for the good - maybe even to bring people together. It started off unpleasant, but can end in a dream!

Nick Sandmann and the students of Covington have become symbols of Fake News and how evil it can be. They have captivated the attention of the world, and I know they will use it for the good - maybe even to bring people together. It started off unpleasant, but can end in a dream!

Sandmann is the Covington student who was pictured, some say he was smirking, as Native American activist Nathan Phillips played his drum.

Also on Twitter a writer for Saturday Night Live, in a since-deleted Tweet, offered oral sex. "I will blow whoever manages to punch that MAGA kid in the face," Beattie Tweeted.

Will we see someone attacked--or even killed--over their support for the president?

Some conservatives, or possible conservatives, have dialed back their condemnation of the Covington boys, such as S.E. Cupp. "Hey guys,' Cupp Tweeted. "Seeing all the additional videos now, and I 100% regret reacting too quickly to the Covington story. I wish I’d had the fuller picture before weighing in, and I'm truly sorry."

Hey guys. Seeing all the additional videos now, and I 100% regret reacting too quickly to the Covington story. I wish I’d had the fuller picture before weighing in, and I’m truly sorry.

On Friday the primary fake news electronic media. MSNBC and CNN, took a specious story from a fakier news source, BuzzFeed, about President Trump allegedly directing his then-lawyer, Michael Cohen, to lie for Congress.

Then the Mueller office said the report as "inaccurate."

Which caused the goofs at these networks to look even more foolish than usual.

Sunday, January 20, 2019

Yes, you read that right. I listened to a Rachel Maddow podcasts. Seven episodes worth. Once you sift through the Trump Derangement Syndrome there is some worthwhile stuff there as I report at Da Tech Guy: Review, Bag Man, a Rachel Maddow podcast from MSNBC.

Most of the media has a sickness. Many blogs too. It's called Trump Derangement Syndrome. It's a rush to misjudgement that compels the unelected Democrats writing for Buzfeed, Vox, the New York Slimes, and the Washington Compost, to take any story about our president and his supporters, find a way to tar either of them--preferably both--and run with it.

Such is the case of a group of Kentucky high school students, some of them wearing MAGA hats who interacted with a few Native American activists, including one man singing and banging a drum, at the National Mall in Washington.

The day after Buzzfeed ended up with rotten eggs on its face over fake news about President Trump directing his personal lawyer to lie to Congress, came another attack on truth.

No lessons were learned from the story's collapse, either, to judge by the frenzy that next broke out from the same sort of people over the case of Covington Catholic High School and Native American activist Nathan Phillips. Once again, enlightened opinion did not wait on much evidence before reaching a verdict: a one-minute video clip of a teen in a red MAGA hat smirking right in front of Phillips while the elder beat a hand drum and sang was all the proof required. This was a hate-motivated outrage perpetrated by white Trump supporters. Case closed.

The narrative assumed that the Covington boys had surrounded Philips and stood right in his face, grinning in silent insult. When a second video seemed to show that it was in fact Phillips who had approached the teens, it received even less attention — much as those few voices of caution about Buzzfeed’s fable were ignored by the true believers. But there are more videos, including one that’s nine-minutes long and provides a great deal of interesting context.

The teen is not smirking in this clip, and Phillips has his an entourage with cameras. One of the Indian activists argues with a Covington teen, who argues back. This and other clips have shown the Indian activists racially taunting the teens, saying things like "go back to Europe." Phillips has claimed that the teens were chanting "build the wall!," but that isn’t in any of the videos that circulated Saturday. Based on what can actually be seen and heard, it’s looks as if Phillips and his crew sought out Catholic teenagers and tried to make them uncomfortable. And of course, they recorded it. (Notably, however, both the Indian activists and the Covington teens rein in the activist and teenager who get into a shouting match. An appropriate attempt at restraint was has been completely ignored.)

The videos appear to depict more than one engagement between the Indians and the Catholic teens, and without knowing which happened first, and what circumstances led to the first encounter, it’s hard to form any conclusions, if fairness is your objective. Maybe the teens chanted “Build the wall!” or something else at the Indian activists, which prompted Phillips to approach them. But so far, there’s no evidence to support that scenario, only the words of Phillips and his associates. That hasn’t stopped blue-checkmark media figures like former CNN blatherskite Reza Aslan from not only branding the teens as racists but in Aslan’s case musing about inflicting violence on them:

Indisputable video evidence of the entire interaction shows the Native man approaching the boys as they stood doing school chants on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The press blatantly flipped the narrative around. The boy at the center of the video, who has been demonized and doxxed by internet crazies, did not approach the Native man. The Native man approached him.

Twitter user Joey Salads reached out to the boys to get their side of the story, a step that was hastily skipped by the mainstream press, eager to vilify Trump supporters in any way.

Just finished talking with Kids who were at the protest.
They were there for “March for Lives” not protesting against Native Americans.
Read their responses. pic.twitter.com/kg6GtvZGRL

Wow. Salads performed real journalism. He, wait for it, sought out both sides!

The March for Life, for those of you in the mainstream media who never heard of it, is a pro-life event, and it always has tens-of-thousands of participants. It's an event that much of the media regularly ignores.

Saturday, January 19, 2019

President Trump, in a televised White House address Saturday, offered Democrats a compromise package on immigration in an effort to end the nearly monthlong partial government shutdown -- although some prominent Democrats were dismissing the olive branch as a "non-starter" before Trump even spoke.

Trump announced that he was prepared to back a three-year extension of protections for 700,000 immigrants who came to the country illegally as children and were shielded from deportation under the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. This, in exchange for the $5.7 billion he has requested for a barrier on the southern border with Mexico.

"Walls are not immoral," he said, adding that a wall "will save many lives and stop drugs from pouring into our country.

"This is not a concrete structure from sea to sea," he said, addressing some previously expressed concerns about the so-called "wall." "These are steel barriers in high-priority locations."

CNN is still in shock over its hangover after coming down from the glee over reporting the now-discredited Buzzfeed story that President Trump directed his disgraced attorney, Michael Cohen, to lie to Congress over some old Russian business deal that never came to fruition.

During on-air autopsy a CNN expert--that's a low bar, by the way, to become a CNN expert--frustratingly cried out that Americans are going to believe that the media is "a bunch of leftist liars."

Special Counsel Robert Mueller's office on Friday issued an extraordinary statement disputing a bombshell news report that claimed President Trump directed Michael Cohen to lie about the timing of discussions over a proposed Trump Tower project in Moscow.

"BuzzFeed's description of specific statements to the Special Counsel's Office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen’s Congressional testimony are not accurate," Peter Carr, a spokesman for Mueller's office, said.

The statement is remarkable in that Mueller's team rarely issues statements in response to news stories. But BuzzFeed's story sparked immense interest from Democrats, who called for renewed investigations and even suggested the allegations could be a basis for impeachment proceedings.

Buzzfeed is the name fake news source that broke the now discredited Russian dossier concocted by former British spy Christopher Steele.

Last month Mrs. Marathon Pundit and I visited Andrew Jackson's home in Nashville, the Hermitage.

"At one time in the history of the United States, General Andrew Jackson of Tennessee was honored above all living men," is the opening passage of Robert V. Remini's Andrew Jackson: The Course of American Empire, 1767-1821. Vol. 1 Later he writes, "No American ever had so powerful an impact on the minds and spirit of his contemporaries as did Andrew Jackson."

Old Hickory was a giant. And he's generally considered to be the most badass president ever. What, you don't believe me? Then Google you need to "Badass Andrew Jackson."

Sure it looks like a bus bench that I'm resting on but that's the entrance sign to the Hermitage. I am wearing a Donald Trump MAGA hat, that is of course, a Make America Great Again hat. More on Trump later.

A lot more.

It sure is dark, isn't it. When Mrs. Marathon Pundit visited it was a overcast, gloomy, and chilly, for middle Tennessee at least, December day.

That's the Hermitage from the rear. I couldn't get a good angle from the front. I'm not sure if they want guests trampling on the grass up front and I didn't have much fight in me that day. I didn't know it at the time but I was coming down with a very bad cold.

"No rules" is why I love urban exploration. Sure, I'm usually trespassing when I pursuing that hobby , but freedom is exhilarating. In the abandoned factories of Detroit, there is no one there to shout, "Don't go there, don't touch that."

Photography inside the Hermitage is forbidden. This is the selfie and Instagram age.

Why not?

Prior to seeing Old Hickory's old home we wandering through the visitors' center where we saw a twenty-minute long biography of our seventh president. There we learned that Jackson owned slaves. Oops, make that enslaved persons. American slavery was unequivocally evil, but calling those who suffered under it enslaved persons doesn't make it less so. But in the film, and on the grounds, enslaved persons is the preferred term.

Once on the grounds Mrs. Marathon Pundit and I switched on our headphones, there are no tour guides at the Hermitage. When we came across a marker we clicked on the corresponding number and listened.

That's the kitchen building for the first Hermitage. Inexplicably I didn't snap any photos of the original Hermitage, which looked similar and by all certainly have been rebuilt to look as it did during Jackson's time. You can see photos of the old Hermitage here. Old Hermitage later served as slave residences.

That slave cabin was where "Uncle" Alfred Jackson lived. He was born around 1803 and he was Old Hickory's longtime servant. He died at the age of 98. After he gained his freedom, Alfred was the first tour guide at the Hermitage. This blog suggests that Alfred may have been born in the kitchen cabin.

Jackson's life was eventful. While still in his teens he was a Revolutionary War POW then an orphan. After moving to Tennessee, Andy became a lawyer. He was a general during the War of 1812, and was the commanding general at the Battle of New Orleans, a resounding victory for the Americans which saw his British counterpart, Sir Edward Michael Pakenham, was killed in action.

After that war Jackson led an invasion of Florida, then controlled by Spain, as during the First Seminole War. He briefly served as territorial governor of Florida, was a member of the US House, then a senator.

A few years after moving to what is now Tennessee Jackson met Rachel Donelson, who was in an unhappy marriage. Rachel received a divorce, but not until after she married Jackson. They believed the divorce had already been finalized, which forced the Jacksons to go through a humiliating second marriage ceremony.

For much of his political career Jackson was called a bigamist. as was Rachel. Old Hickory believed that the stress from the insults of the 1828 presidential campaign--which Jackson won--destroyed her health. She died a few weeks after his victory but before being inaugurated. Jackson never forgave his opponent, John Quincy Adams, as well as his supporters, for Rachel's death.

Rachel and Andrew are buried on the grounds of the Hermitage, their tomb is pictured above.

Adjacent to the Jackson tomb is a small family plot. On the other side of the tomb is the grave of Alfred Jackson, which reads, "Uncle Alfred. Died Sept. 4 1901. Faithful servant on Andrew Jackson."
Yes, no surname is mentioned.

Here is one of the reminders of the evils of slavery. If you are just learning now that slavery was vile, then man, oh man, do you have problems. Very serious ones.

The signs are a bit yellowed and the plastic is somewhat opaque, so it appears they've been on the grounds for a while.

Inside the visitor's center it appears that the exhibits haven't been updated in a few years, so there is no mention, at least that I could find. of Donald J. Trump's visit to the Hermitage in 2017. Our 45th commander-in-chief was the first president to visit Old Hickory's home since Ronald Reagan did in 1982 on the occasion of Andy's 215th birthday.

The purpose of Trump's trip to the Hermitage was to honor Jackson on the 250th anniversary of his birth; while there the president, who has badass tendencies too, placed a wreath at Jackson's tomb while Taps played. Trump has a portrait of #7 in the Oval Office and is a big admirer of Old Hickory.

Cotton was the main crop, a profitable one for Jackson, unless a late frost, or an early one, struck Tennessee. There's a cotton patch at the Hermitage.

Jon Meacham is the author of the recent best-sellerAmerican Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House. He's also on the board of trustees of the Hermitage Foundation and his book is on sale at the Hermitage gift shop and on the Hermitage website. Meacham appears in that biographical film I mentioned earlier that plays in the visitors' center.

On his January 14 show radio host Mark Levin said of the author, "Here's Jon Meacham. He's presented as this great historian, he speaks at all of the Bush events, He's written many books. But he hates Trump. Which is why goes on MSLSD [MSNBC]. So here is on Friday night, he doesn't know more than the rest of us [about the so called Trump-Russia connection]. So he tries to give this the patina of a serious event by referencing history."

"You look at all of these different fronts," Meacham told serial fabulist Brian Williams, "and you have the sort of the emergency conversation which is deeply important and complicated, but we've really never had--and if we have, it's classified and lost to history at least so far--a president of the United States who is considered to be possibly an asset of a foreign government."

Wow, does Meacham believe that Trump could be an asset of Russia? What is this "emergency conversation" Meacham spoke of?

Above is the view from Jackson's tomb. In the distance is a herd of belted Galloway cows. While Jackson of course kept livestock, this Scottish breed of cow was not one of the varieties Old Hickory owned.

Yeah, I don't get it either.

Back to Levin and Meacham:

Levin then defended the president, "He's not considered to be 'an asset of a foreign government,' except by those who libel him. There's no evidence whatsoever that there is anything demonstrating that Trump is an asset of a foreign government."

Levin then adds that we've gone from Trump allegedly being a colluder with Russia to being instead an asset of Russia.

"Now before we go on to the genius that Meacham believes he is," Levin continued by laying out all of the actions that Trump has put forth as president to confront Russia.

Back to the genius, who is a former editor-in-chief at Newsweek, also known as Newsweak:

"This is what the Founders were worried about in the 1790s," Meacham told the man who was demoted from hosting the NBC Nightly News for exaggerating his past. "The Jeffersonians worried that Washington and Hamilton might be British agents, Washington and Adams and Hamilton worried that Jefferson might be a French agent. But that was in a kind of fevered political atmosphere. There was no FBI to investigate it."

"What is he rambling on about," the legal scholar known as the Great One retorted. "There is no parallel between that and this. None whatsoever," Besides, none of those Founding Fathers were foreign agents, Levin concluded.

Two nights ago Meacham, again on Williams' show, dismissed Trump voters such as myself and Mrs. Marathon Pundit by claiming that we "reached for more chaos."

Wrong.

We wanted--and still want--smaller government and a more responsive government. After all, Jackson killed the Bank of the United States because he trusted the American people, not the elites.

This stream was photographed in the field quarter section of the Hermitage grounds, and it's likely that it served as a source of drinking water for the slaves, many of whom resided nearby.

Jackson was as a hot-tempered man and as far as anyone knows, he's the only president to have killed a man, other than during battle. In a dispute over a horse racing bet, Jackson challenged Charles Dickinson to a duel. Andy strategically allowed Dickinson to shoot first, as he believed his opponent to be the better shot but suspected that in his haste, Dickinson's aim would be off. Dickinson did indeed fire first--wounding Old Hickory in the chest.

Jackson then took careful aim and then fired back--delivering a fatal wound to Dickinson.

Dickinson's musket ball was too close to Jackson's heart to be removed and the wound plagued him for the rest of his life, although Old Hickory still managed to live 78 years.

Jackson's hatred of the British began during his time as a Revolutionary War prisoner was maintained all of those years.

I'm not sure if what is pictured here is the official Hermitage field quarter trail or it is a place
where I wasn't supposed to be walking. But because there was no one there to chase me away, I took it anyway.

Besides being a slave owner, the other black mark on Jackson's life is his signing the Indian Removal Act of 1830 into law which led to the deadly Trail of Tears march by the Cherokee tribe to Oklahoma.

Above is a Trail of Tears historical route sign in southern Illinois that I photographed in 2009.

On the last day of his presidency Jackson expressed two regrets--that he "had been unable to shoot Henry Clay (one of his opponents in the 1824 presidential race) or to hang John C. Calhoun (his first vice president)."

We're a couple of centuries removed from the dueling era. Which might be something Jon Mecham is grateful for.

Like Chinese suffering during Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution who are forced to read the communist dictator's Little Red Book daily these Georgetown University students prove they can't think for themselves.

Thursday, January 17, 2019

Perhaps it's fortunate that Illinois has outlawed capital punishment. The Prairie State cannot do anything right. Because if a convict was strapped onto a lethal injection gurney I can see the witnesses being dealt the fatal dose, not the creep who was sentenced.

Video gambling, legalized here in 2009, was supposed to rescue, or at the very least alleviate, the fiscal morass the Land of Mary Todd Lincoln Spending got itself into.

The machines, which legislators said would generate billions of dollars in revenue for the cash-strapped state, are spread out over 6,800 establishments, dotting highways and towns from Winnebago County in the north to Alexander County in the south. Step outside the borders of Chicago, where video gambling remains illegal, and you will see feather flags, billboards and neon signs advertising video slots and poker in bars and restaurants, truck stops and storefront gambling parlors.

Illinois now has more locations to legally place a bet than Nevada.

But the meteoric rise of video gambling has proven to be little more than a botched money grab, according to a ProPublica Illinois investigation of a system that has gone virtually unchecked since its inception. Based on dozens of interviews, a review of thousands of pages of state financial records and an analysis of six years of gambling data, this unprecedented examination found that far from helping to pull the state out of its financial tailspin, the legalization of video gambling instead accelerated it and saddled Illinois with new, unfunded regulatory and social costs.

Meanwhile, video gambling companies have exploited the deeply flawed legislation to reap hundreds of millions of dollars in profits, while the cities and towns that bear the brunt of the social costs related to gambling receive a fraction of those proceeds.

The legal minimum wage for New York City employers with 11 or more workers rose more than 15 percent on Dec. 31, 2018, to $15 per hour from $13, giving fast-food, retail and other employees a bump in pay. But some New York City restaurant owners say the latest minimum wage hike is forcing them to cut workers' hours just to stay afloat.

It's the third rise in the city's base wage since Dec. 31, 2016, when it went to $11 an hour. The latest increase is part of a plan that phases in minimum wage hikes across New York state, with amounts and effective dates varying by region and industry. It's not just a New York phenomenon, however: Minimum wages rose in 20 states with the new year, forcing businesses across the country to grapple with higher payrolls -- and compete for workers with giants like Amazon that are already offering $15 an hour.

Jon Bloostein operates six New York City restaurants that employ between 50 and 110 people each. The owner of Heartland Brewery and Houston Hall, Bloostein said the effect of the higher minimum wage on payroll across locations represents "an immense cost" to his business.

"We lost control of our largest controllable expense," he told CBS MoneyWatch. "So in order to live with that and stay in business, we're cutting hours."

In the ad, the razor brand — a subsidiary of global giant Proctor & Gamble — calls out "bullying," "sexual harassment" and "toxic masculinity," and questions: "Is this the best a man can get?" The campaign goes on to encourage men to hold one another accountable for their behavior.

Gillette said on its website it was time brands acknowledged the role they played in influencing culture.

"As a company that encourages men to be their best, we have a responsibility to make sure we are promoting positive, attainable, inclusive and healthy versions of what it means to be a man," the company said.

However, the ad's message was met with backlash from some, with claims it was too political and painted all men as bullies or sexual harassers. The YouTube video, which has been viewed more than 2.8 million times, has almost 250,000 dislikes, while others took to social media to respond to the campaign.

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